C# Suggestions

[Droll]

- I already use static units and vehicles for boarding defense, the former being ship board turrets, the latter being used as trams on space stations for the ferrying of supplies and providing heavy weapon support. Since ground formations defend their mothership, anything goes really, or so I assume...

Only infantry is used in ship combat, so I don't think that either static nor vehicles will help you much there.

 - Don't formations defend their own ship? I thought the infantry-only was with regards to the attacking force only...

No it also applies to the defending side.

[xenoscepter]

- I already use static units and vehicles for boarding defense, the former being ship board turrets, the latter being used as trams on space stations for the ferrying of supplies and providing heavy weapon support. Since ground formations defend their mothership, anything goes really, or so I assume...

Only infantry is used in ship combat, so I don't think that either static nor vehicles will help you much there.

 - Don't formations defend their own ship? I thought the infantry-only was with regards to the attacking force only...

No it also applies to the defending side.

 - Well, crap.

[nuclearslurpee]

I have been considering some form of 'armoury' module to allow the crew to be better armed for a while. It is less micromanagement than building ground forces to assign to ships where the intention is solely to improve boarding defence. The armoury could be a fixed size and would arm a fixed number of crew with personal weapons with the rest of the crew functioning as they do now. There are a few caveats however.

1) It is unlikely that crew would be as well trained as the troops in a regular infantry formation
2) It is unlikely than crew would be able to function in powered armour
3) It would unreasonable for an armoury module to auto-upgrade crew weapons when that doesn't apply to normal infantry formations.
4) What happens to the ability of the armoury to equip crew after they have been in a battle and some have been killed.

1) and 2) could be handled in 2 ways. Either assign some form of attack penalty, which reduces the effect of having the armoury, or handwave it and assume the 'armoury' module is also used to train the crew.

3) is trickier. The only real way around it is make the armoury a designed module that has fixed weapon and armour strengths at the time of creation. if I did that, I could also have a 'training' option on the module that makes it larger but allows the crew to function at full effectiveness. Plus maybe a 'powered armour' option that also increases size but allows crew to use powered armour. Although that is starting to get more complex.

4) is also tricky. In normal ground combat, when someone is killed their equipment is also lost so the armoury should be less effective after a battle, but I don't want to track weapons held by individual armouries.

The various questions above are why I haven't yet moved forward with this type of module. Perhaps a better option is to give ships an assigned group formation type in the same way as ordnance (which would have to fit within their troop transport capacity), so when they are built they pick up their ground formation. That, together with queueing ground units, solves a lot of the micromanagement. I can even have a name template for the formation so it gets renamed when assigned to the ship.

In my opinion it would be much better if you changed the UI to better support small ship based security forces and marines. I would like the ground troop screen to be able to filter out troops onboard ships or that you can flag formations as ship security/marine forces so the game understand these are troops assigned to the ship rather than being transported from one place to another.

We should then also be able to see such forces in the ship information screen as more like part of the ship, perhaps even in the ship info screen as if then parasites and missiles are added.

I think this would be better and would fit better in general in my opinion. People on ships should usually be dedicated marines or not.

I second this viewpoint. Besides being probably easier to implement than a whole new armory mechanic, the existing approach of sticking a troop bay and a platoon of marines, security guards, or what have you is I think just better for RP, plus handles all of the caveats Steve mentioned just fine with existing mechanics (leaving #1 and #2 up to player RP - never a bad result - #3 and #4 take care of themselves). Some tweaks to reduce micro are always welcome but adding a new and probably rather opaque mechanic I don't think is worth it.

[Droll]

I have been considering some form of 'armoury' module to allow the crew to be better armed for a while. It is less micromanagement than building ground forces to assign to ships where the intention is solely to improve boarding defence. The armoury could be a fixed size and would arm a fixed number of crew with personal weapons with the rest of the crew functioning as they do now. There are a few caveats however.

1) It is unlikely that crew would be as well trained as the troops in a regular infantry formation
2) It is unlikely than crew would be able to function in powered armour
3) It would unreasonable for an armoury module to auto-upgrade crew weapons when that doesn't apply to normal infantry formations.
4) What happens to the ability of the armoury to equip crew after they have been in a battle and some have been killed.

1) and 2) could be handled in 2 ways. Either assign some form of attack penalty, which reduces the effect of having the armoury, or handwave it and assume the 'armoury' module is also used to train the crew.

3) is trickier. The only real way around it is make the armoury a designed module that has fixed weapon and armour strengths at the time of creation. if I did that, I could also have a 'training' option on the module that makes it larger but allows the crew to function at full effectiveness. Plus maybe a 'powered armour' option that also increases size but allows crew to use powered armour. Although that is starting to get more complex.

4) is also tricky. In normal ground combat, when someone is killed their equipment is also lost so the armoury should be less effective after a battle, but I don't want to track weapons held by individual armouries.

The various questions above are why I haven't yet moved forward with this type of module. Perhaps a better option is to give ships an assigned group formation type in the same way as ordnance (which would have to fit within their troop transport capacity), so when they are built they pick up their ground formation. That, together with queueing ground units, solves a lot of the micromanagement. I can even have a name template for the formation so it gets renamed when assigned to the ship.

In my opinion it would be much better if you changed the UI to better support small ship based security forces and marines. I would like the ground troop screen to be able to filter out troops onboard ships or that you can flag formations as ship security/marine forces so the game understand these are troops assigned to the ship rather than being transported from one place to another.

We should then also be able to see such forces in the ship information screen as more like part of the ship, perhaps even in the ship info screen as if then parasites and missiles are added.

I think this would be better and would fit better in general in my opinion. People on ships should usually be dedicated marines or not.

I second this viewpoint. Besides being probably easier to implement than a whole new armory mechanic, the existing approach of sticking a troop bay and a platoon of marines, security guards, or what have you is I think just better for RP, plus handles all of the caveats Steve mentioned just fine with existing mechanics (leaving #1 and #2 up to player RP - never a bad result - #3 and #4 take care of themselves). Some tweaks to reduce micro are always welcome but adding a new and probably rather opaque mechanic I don't think is worth it.

It would also be quite well suited to have micro sized troop transport bays - so a 50 or 100t module that will basically only ever house a single squad for example. These tiny variants need not have boarding / drop pod versions. That way you can design your own security team for the ship, this works incredibly well because it give total player agency and synergizes very well with the new misc components - so your ship can just have an "armory" anyways.

[Zincat]

I would be very much a fan of a "select standard defense squad" for a given ship design, with auto-load function. Not so much to reduce the micro, but also to avoid those: "oops I forgot to load the defense troops" moments
Also having smaller troop transport bays sound nice

[Jorgen_CAB]

I would be very much a fan of a "select standard defense squad" for a given ship design, with auto-load function. Not so much to reduce the micro, but also to avoid those: "oops I forgot to load the defense troops" moments
Also having smaller troop transport bays sound nice

Something like... if you designate a formation as a ship force it shows up in the "Class Design" window in a new tab called troops. You now select formations in the same way like ordnance. You also can just have a ship order to load/unload ship troops to easily load and unload these troops. You also could use this to transfer reinforcements to killed soldiers from any formation on that body designated as "reserved".

This would make it easy to manage small ship troop forces and stay true to the rest of the troop system at the same time.

[db48x]

I would be very much a fan of a "select standard defense squad" for a given ship design, with auto-load function. Not so much to reduce the micro, but also to avoid those: "oops I forgot to load the defense troops" moments
Also having smaller troop transport bays sound nice

Something like... if you designate a formation as a ship force it shows up in the "Class Design" window in a new tab called troops. You now select formations in the same way like ordnance. You also can just have a ship order to load/unload ship troops to easily load and unload these troops. You also could use this to transfer reinforcements to killed soldiers from any formation on that body designated as "reserved".

This would make it easy to manage small ship troop forces and stay true to the rest of the troop system at the same time.

I like all of these ideas. Selecting a formation template during the class design makes a lot of sense, and adding orders for replenishing those troops makes it even better. Add in an order that allows one fleet to draw replacements from another, and I think it completes the set.

[nuclearslurpee]

I would be very much a fan of a "select standard defense squad" for a given ship design, with auto-load function. Not so much to reduce the micro, but also to avoid those: "oops I forgot to load the defense troops" moments
Also having smaller troop transport bays sound nice

Something like... if you designate a formation as a ship force it shows up in the "Class Design" window in a new tab called troops. You now select formations in the same way like ordnance. You also can just have a ship order to load/unload ship troops to easily load and unload these troops. You also could use this to transfer reinforcements to killed soldiers from any formation on that body designated as "reserved".

This would make it easy to manage small ship troop forces and stay true to the rest of the troop system at the same time.

I like all of these ideas. Selecting a formation template during the class design makes a lot of sense, and adding orders for replenishing those troops makes it even better. Add in an order that allows one fleet to draw replacements from another, and I think it completes the set.

The last bit is actually probably an even better idea by itself than anything else, since it would enable us to use troop transports as carriers for reinforcements to keep our boarding marines topped off.

[Borealis4x]

I have been considering some form of 'armoury' module to allow the crew to be better armed for a while. It is less micromanagement than building ground forces to assign to ships where the intention is solely to improve boarding defence. The armoury could be a fixed size and would arm a fixed number of crew with personal weapons with the rest of the crew functioning as they do now. There are a few caveats however.

1) It is unlikely that crew would be as well trained as the troops in a regular infantry formation
2) It is unlikely than crew would be able to function in powered armour
3) It would unreasonable for an armoury module to auto-upgrade crew weapons when that doesn't apply to normal infantry formations.
4) What happens to the ability of the armoury to equip crew after they have been in a battle and some have been killed.

1) and 2) could be handled in 2 ways. Either assign some form of attack penalty, which reduces the effect of having the armoury, or handwave it and assume the 'armoury' module is also used to train the crew.

3) is trickier. The only real way around it is make the armoury a designed module that has fixed weapon and armour strengths at the time of creation. if I did that, I could also have a 'training' option on the module that makes it larger but allows the crew to function at full effectiveness. Plus maybe a 'powered armour' option that also increases size but allows crew to use powered armour. Although that is starting to get more complex.

4) is also tricky. In normal ground combat, when someone is killed their equipment is also lost so the armoury should be less effective after a battle, but I don't want to track weapons held by individual armouries.

The various questions above are why I haven't yet moved forward with this type of module. Perhaps a better option is to give ships an assigned group formation type in the same way as ordnance (which would have to fit within their troop transport capacity), so when they are built they pick up their ground formation. That, together with queueing ground units, solves a lot of the micromanagement. I can even have a name template for the formation so it gets renamed when assigned to the ship.

I quite like the Armory solution to ship security and would highly discourage making the player use regular ground formations for the purpose, which I feel would still be far too much micro whichever way you slice it.

1) I actually had an old co-worker who was a Sonar operator on a USN sub, and he said he received periodic weapons and tactics training. I believe it is standard practice on most ships to 'draft' and equip the crew to repel boarders although specialized security personnel do exist. I'd say it justified to assume crewmen are still trained in anti-boarding tactics as part of their standard curriculum. They're by no means SEALs, but they get the job done. Perhaps if you add a training level attribute to ground units one day armed crewmen could be stuck at 'basic'.

2) I completely agree, Power Armor should be specialized equipment that is by no means standard issue. They shouldn't be issued on ship Armories meant for defense. If you want PA'd troops, you need to do it the old fashioned way with a troop transport bay.

3) I think that 'upgrading' ground troops should be as simple as retraining them when you have better racial armor and weapons at a Ground Force facility; the current system is too convoluted IMO. Same for Armory Modules, they should be upgraded after a ship finishes overhaul or even just when a ship resupplies at a friendly port. After all, you're just clearing out the old guns and brining in the new.

However, when constrained to current systems I think its fine to just make Armories components with a Weapons tech slot and Armor tech slot. Sure its annoying and unrealistic that you have to create a whole new class of ship just to restock the Armory, but its the most straight-forward and easy to understand solution. Perhaps you could make armory 'retrofits' extremely cheap and almost instant.

4) Perhaps link Armory usage to MSP. Whenever you take casualties during a boarding operation, it drains MSP and your armor has to consume more to re-arm. Given how abstract MSP is currently I don't see the harm in extending it to security equipment.

An Armor would be a much more elegant and realistic solution to improving ship security than adding ground forces to every ship.

[Droll]

I have been considering some form of 'armoury' module to allow the crew to be better armed for a while. It is less micromanagement than building ground forces to assign to ships where the intention is solely to improve boarding defence. The armoury could be a fixed size and would arm a fixed number of crew with personal weapons with the rest of the crew functioning as they do now. There are a few caveats however.

1) It is unlikely that crew would be as well trained as the troops in a regular infantry formation
2) It is unlikely than crew would be able to function in powered armour
3) It would unreasonable for an armoury module to auto-upgrade crew weapons when that doesn't apply to normal infantry formations.
4) What happens to the ability of the armoury to equip crew after they have been in a battle and some have been killed.

1) and 2) could be handled in 2 ways. Either assign some form of attack penalty, which reduces the effect of having the armoury, or handwave it and assume the 'armoury' module is also used to train the crew.

3) is trickier. The only real way around it is make the armoury a designed module that has fixed weapon and armour strengths at the time of creation. if I did that, I could also have a 'training' option on the module that makes it larger but allows the crew to function at full effectiveness. Plus maybe a 'powered armour' option that also increases size but allows crew to use powered armour. Although that is starting to get more complex.

4) is also tricky. In normal ground combat, when someone is killed their equipment is also lost so the armoury should be less effective after a battle, but I don't want to track weapons held by individual armouries.

The various questions above are why I haven't yet moved forward with this type of module. Perhaps a better option is to give ships an assigned group formation type in the same way as ordnance (which would have to fit within their troop transport capacity), so when they are built they pick up their ground formation. That, together with queueing ground units, solves a lot of the micromanagement. I can even have a name template for the formation so it gets renamed when assigned to the ship.

I'm quite like the Armory solution to ship security and would highly discourage making the player use regular ground formations for the purpose, which I feel would still be far too much micro whichever way you slice it.

1) I actually had an old co-worker who was a Sonar operator on a USN sub, and he said he received periodic weapons and tactics training like all seamen and officer do. I believe it is standard practice on most ships to 'draft' and equip the crew to repel boarders although specialized security personnel do exist. I'd say it justified to assume crewmen are still trained in anti-boarding tactics in space. They're by no means SEALs, but they get the job done. Perhaps if you add a training level attribute to ground units one day armed crewmen could be stuck at 'basic'.

2) I completely agree, Power Armor should be specialized equipment that is by no means standard issue. They shouldn't be issued on ship Armories meant for defense. If you want PA'd troops, you need to do it the old fashioned way with a troop transport bay.

3) I think that 'upgrading' ground troops should be as simple as retraining them when you have better racial armor and weapons at a Ground Force facility; the current system is too convoluted IMO. Same for Armory Modules, they should be upgraded after a ship finishes overhaul or even just when a ship resupplies at a friendly port. After all, you're just clearing out the old guns and brining in the new.

However, when constrained to current systems I think its fine to just make Armories components with a Weapons tech slot and Armor tech slot. Sure its annoying and unrealistic that you have to create a whole new class of ship just to restock the Armory, but its the most straight-forward and easy to understand solution. Perhaps you could make armory 'retrofits' extremely cheap and almost instant.

4) Perhaps link Armory usage to MSP. Whenever you take casualties during a boarding operation, it drains MSP and your armor has to consume more to re-arm. Given how abstract MSP is currently I don't see the harm in extending it to security equipment.

An Armor would be a much more elegant and realistic solution to improving ship security than adding ground forces to every ship.

Training level in ground combat is abstracted under morale. Notice that officer with ground force training will slowly increase the morale of their formation over time.
It would certainly be appropriate even if an armory or such isn't added to make it so that the crew grade bonus applies to the morale of defending crew. So a crew grade bonus of 22% will create crewmen elements at 122 morale. 22% accuracy boost for the defenders will certainly make boarding more dangerous.

[Borealis4x]

I have been considering some form of 'armoury' module to allow the crew to be better armed for a while. It is less micromanagement than building ground forces to assign to ships where the intention is solely to improve boarding defence. The armoury could be a fixed size and would arm a fixed number of crew with personal weapons with the rest of the crew functioning as they do now. There are a few caveats however.

1) It is unlikely that crew would be as well trained as the troops in a regular infantry formation
2) It is unlikely than crew would be able to function in powered armour
3) It would unreasonable for an armoury module to auto-upgrade crew weapons when that doesn't apply to normal infantry formations.
4) What happens to the ability of the armoury to equip crew after they have been in a battle and some have been killed.

1) and 2) could be handled in 2 ways. Either assign some form of attack penalty, which reduces the effect of having the armoury, or handwave it and assume the 'armoury' module is also used to train the crew.

3) is trickier. The only real way around it is make the armoury a designed module that has fixed weapon and armour strengths at the time of creation. if I did that, I could also have a 'training' option on the module that makes it larger but allows the crew to function at full effectiveness. Plus maybe a 'powered armour' option that also increases size but allows crew to use powered armour. Although that is starting to get more complex.

4) is also tricky. In normal ground combat, when someone is killed their equipment is also lost so the armoury should be less effective after a battle, but I don't want to track weapons held by individual armouries.

The various questions above are why I haven't yet moved forward with this type of module. Perhaps a better option is to give ships an assigned group formation type in the same way as ordnance (which would have to fit within their troop transport capacity), so when they are built they pick up their ground formation. That, together with queueing ground units, solves a lot of the micromanagement. I can even have a name template for the formation so it gets renamed when assigned to the ship.

I'm quite like the Armory solution to ship security and would highly discourage making the player use regular ground formations for the purpose, which I feel would still be far too much micro whichever way you slice it.

1) I actually had an old co-worker who was a Sonar operator on a USN sub, and he said he received periodic weapons and tactics training like all seamen and officer do. I believe it is standard practice on most ships to 'draft' and equip the crew to repel boarders although specialized security personnel do exist. I'd say it justified to assume crewmen are still trained in anti-boarding tactics in space. They're by no means SEALs, but they get the job done. Perhaps if you add a training level attribute to ground units one day armed crewmen could be stuck at 'basic'.

2) I completely agree, Power Armor should be specialized equipment that is by no means standard issue. They shouldn't be issued on ship Armories meant for defense. If you want PA'd troops, you need to do it the old fashioned way with a troop transport bay.

3) I think that 'upgrading' ground troops should be as simple as retraining them when you have better racial armor and weapons at a Ground Force facility; the current system is too convoluted IMO. Same for Armory Modules, they should be upgraded after a ship finishes overhaul or even just when a ship resupplies at a friendly port. After all, you're just clearing out the old guns and brining in the new.

However, when constrained to current systems I think its fine to just make Armories components with a Weapons tech slot and Armor tech slot. Sure its annoying and unrealistic that you have to create a whole new class of ship just to restock the Armory, but its the most straight-forward and easy to understand solution. Perhaps you could make armory 'retrofits' extremely cheap and almost instant.

4) Perhaps link Armory usage to MSP. Whenever you take casualties during a boarding operation, it drains MSP and your armor has to consume more to re-arm. Given how abstract MSP is currently I don't see the harm in extending it to security equipment.

An Armor would be a much more elegant and realistic solution to improving ship security than adding ground forces to every ship.

Training level in ground combat is abstracted under morale. Notice that officer with ground force training will slowly increase the morale of their formation over time.

That doesn't make much sense to me. GI's don't become Delta Force just because their commander changed. Moral should be important sure, but the training level of Ground Units should be something akin to Genetic Modification that greatly enhances their abilities but makes the biggest impact on training time. A solider is more than their equipment.

[Droll]

I have been considering some form of 'armoury' module to allow the crew to be better armed for a while. It is less micromanagement than building ground forces to assign to ships where the intention is solely to improve boarding defence. The armoury could be a fixed size and would arm a fixed number of crew with personal weapons with the rest of the crew functioning as they do now. There are a few caveats however.

1) It is unlikely that crew would be as well trained as the troops in a regular infantry formation
2) It is unlikely than crew would be able to function in powered armour
3) It would unreasonable for an armoury module to auto-upgrade crew weapons when that doesn't apply to normal infantry formations.
4) What happens to the ability of the armoury to equip crew after they have been in a battle and some have been killed.

1) and 2) could be handled in 2 ways. Either assign some form of attack penalty, which reduces the effect of having the armoury, or handwave it and assume the 'armoury' module is also used to train the crew.

3) is trickier. The only real way around it is make the armoury a designed module that has fixed weapon and armour strengths at the time of creation. if I did that, I could also have a 'training' option on the module that makes it larger but allows the crew to function at full effectiveness. Plus maybe a 'powered armour' option that also increases size but allows crew to use powered armour. Although that is starting to get more complex.

4) is also tricky. In normal ground combat, when someone is killed their equipment is also lost so the armoury should be less effective after a battle, but I don't want to track weapons held by individual armouries.

The various questions above are why I haven't yet moved forward with this type of module. Perhaps a better option is to give ships an assigned group formation type in the same way as ordnance (which would have to fit within their troop transport capacity), so when they are built they pick up their ground formation. That, together with queueing ground units, solves a lot of the micromanagement. I can even have a name template for the formation so it gets renamed when assigned to the ship.

I'm quite like the Armory solution to ship security and would highly discourage making the player use regular ground formations for the purpose, which I feel would still be far too much micro whichever way you slice it.

1) I actually had an old co-worker who was a Sonar operator on a USN sub, and he said he received periodic weapons and tactics training like all seamen and officer do. I believe it is standard practice on most ships to 'draft' and equip the crew to repel boarders although specialized security personnel do exist. I'd say it justified to assume crewmen are still trained in anti-boarding tactics in space. They're by no means SEALs, but they get the job done. Perhaps if you add a training level attribute to ground units one day armed crewmen could be stuck at 'basic'.

2) I completely agree, Power Armor should be specialized equipment that is by no means standard issue. They shouldn't be issued on ship Armories meant for defense. If you want PA'd troops, you need to do it the old fashioned way with a troop transport bay.

3) I think that 'upgrading' ground troops should be as simple as retraining them when you have better racial armor and weapons at a Ground Force facility; the current system is too convoluted IMO. Same for Armory Modules, they should be upgraded after a ship finishes overhaul or even just when a ship resupplies at a friendly port. After all, you're just clearing out the old guns and brining in the new.

However, when constrained to current systems I think its fine to just make Armories components with a Weapons tech slot and Armor tech slot. Sure its annoying and unrealistic that you have to create a whole new class of ship just to restock the Armory, but its the most straight-forward and easy to understand solution. Perhaps you could make armory 'retrofits' extremely cheap and almost instant.

4) Perhaps link Armory usage to MSP. Whenever you take casualties during a boarding operation, it drains MSP and your armor has to consume more to re-arm. Given how abstract MSP is currently I don't see the harm in extending it to security equipment.

An Armor would be a much more elegant and realistic solution to improving ship security than adding ground forces to every ship.

Training level in ground combat is abstracted under morale. Notice that officer with ground force training will slowly increase the morale of their formation over time.

That doesn't make much sense to me. GI's don't become Delta Force just because their commander changed. Moral should be important sure, but the training level of Ground Units should be something akin to Genetic Modification that greatly enhances their abilities but makes the biggest impact on training time. A solider is more than their equipment.

I mean I agree that it is a weird abstraction to make from a logical perspective but mechanically it makes sense. After all, the only thing training level would affect would be the hit chance - likewise the only thing morale would affect is also the hit chance.

My suggestion would be to rename morale to "readiness" or to split morale into two; "morale" and "training": Morale acts like fortification, if above 100, enemies are less likely to score hits on that element and if below 100 the element is more likely to get hit. On the other hand training is the offensive counterpart, above 100 training improve the chance that the element scores hits on their targets whereas if below 100 they are less likely to hit the enemy. This introduces a subtle difference between how morale and training would behave but I'm not sure if it is mechanically different enough to warrant an increase in complexity.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I quite like the Armory solution to ship security and would highly discourage making the player use regular ground formations for the purpose, which I feel would still be far too much micro whichever way you slice it.

1) I actually had an old co-worker who was a Sonar operator on a USN sub, and he said he received periodic weapons and tactics training. I believe it is standard practice on most ships to 'draft' and equip the crew to repel boarders although specialized security personnel do exist. I'd say it justified to assume crewmen are still trained in anti-boarding tactics as part of their standard curriculum. They're by no means SEALs, but they get the job done. Perhaps if you add a training level attribute to ground units one day armed crewmen could be stuck at 'basic'.

2) I completely agree, Power Armor should be specialized equipment that is by no means standard issue. They shouldn't be issued on ship Armories meant for defense. If you want PA'd troops, you need to do it the old fashioned way with a troop transport bay.

3) I think that 'upgrading' ground troops should be as simple as retraining them when you have better racial armor and weapons at a Ground Force facility; the current system is too convoluted IMO. Same for Armory Modules, they should be upgraded after a ship finishes overhaul or even just when a ship resupplies at a friendly port. After all, you're just clearing out the old guns and brining in the new.

However, when constrained to current systems I think its fine to just make Armories components with a Weapons tech slot and Armor tech slot. Sure its annoying and unrealistic that you have to create a whole new class of ship just to restock the Armory, but its the most straight-forward and easy to understand solution. Perhaps you could make armory 'retrofits' extremely cheap and almost instant.

4) Perhaps link Armory usage to MSP. Whenever you take casualties during a boarding operation, it drains MSP and your armor has to consume more to re-arm. Given how abstract MSP is currently I don't see the harm in extending it to security equipment.

An Armor would be a much more elegant and realistic solution to improving ship security than adding ground forces to every ship.

While I don't think that Armory sections on ships for small security forces necessarily is bad my thinking is that we should make ALL permanent troops on ships work with the same mechanic and make it better than what it currently is. I for one like to add even small proper marine detachment to ships as well as a more modest security force. I don't see why they should be handled differently as they are more or less interchangeable.

I don't like to build dedicated boarding carriers just because it is simpler and less micromanagement... my idea is to make the mechanic so it fits all ways you can possibly use them instead. It should be easy to reinforce them, board enemy vessels and use specific marine detachment forces for your ships without cluttering the ground forces list of troops etc... Otherwise we should abstract boarding pods in the same manner in my opinion which is something I would not want to do to be honest.

[Kristover]

While we are on the subject of Commanders, I would like to have some additional ground combat commander bonuses that reflect the terrain bonuses that are out there.  I was thinking about this the other night when I was playing - I always create a 'Federation Marine Corps' who have boarding and low-gravity fighting capabilities.  When I'm fighting wars, these are the guys I usually send after any Low-G colonies the enemy might have.  I have also recently created 'Raider Battalions' - Marines with High-G capability.  I think it would be great if we had a '<Capability> Modifer' so that certain commanders are adept Jungle, Desert, Low-G, or Mountain Fighters and that the auto-assignment code is biased to place those Commanders into formations with those capabilities.  It is a smaller thing but I think it would reward some specialization of formations by having dedicated commanders who are expert in their capabilities.

[Kiero]

I would love to see a truly randomly generated world with an intertwining research tree. What I mean by that:

1) Resouces. In Aurora, "sorium" is always a fuel source. I would love to see randomly generated "minerals". So the name, quality (how much fuel you can get out of that resource), and abundance is determined at the start of a game. Higher quality, lower the abundance.
It can also apply to other resources.
Of course, new minerals can be discovered/generated during a game.
Exp. Mineralium from which you can extract 45 Duranium, 12 Gallicite, 2 Sorium. That value can be increased by researching a Mineralium Refining tech.
And if you don't have any other source of sorium... then Mineralium Sorium refining tech will be the research for you to follow. That might also deteriorate duranium and gallicite that can be extracted from that mineral. So the use of a mineral can be "chosen" by a player.

2) Research is accelerated by what you find. For example, you can always develop shiels but if you'll find a black hole or a special nebula or a unique asteroid and a ship with a science module is send there to get samples or to stay at that location. The research project that is linked to it would be accelerated (how much, might be determined as game difficulty, but it should be significant).